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Visa Asia Pacific Acknowledges Sales Restrictions on Adult Content (Updated)

Cietan Kitney, President of Visa Worldwide Japan, confirmed last week that while Visa wants to make its payment service available to legal and legitimate products and services as much as possible, it may sometimes decline purchases to "protect the brand." During in a Q&A session in the company's briefing about its expansion efforts in Osaka, Kitney was responding to a question about the recent spate of credit card companies refusing to process payments for sites and services that may carry adult content (legal in Japan).

Kitney added that such decisions to decline purchases may involve both global and local policies for Visa, and that it is important for the company to maintain honesty and integrity moving forward.

Over the past two years, numerous sites and services in Japan have had to disallow payments from various services such as Visa and Mastercard, due to customer payments being refused through those services. Such sites include, but are not limited to: Nico Nico, Melonbooks and Toranoana, DLSite (which also disallowed American Express), Fantia, Manga Library Z, and Fanza, among others.

Update: The article previously had Cietan Kitney's title as Head of Product Asia Pacific at Visa. This reflects an older position, as he is now President of Visa Worldwide Japan. Thanks arsonal.

Source: Impress Watch via Hachima Kikō